The main reason investors have been cautious heading into this week was because of the potential for a North Korean flare up. It turned out that the market decided to ignore the North Korean risk as the last week before Labor Day, when most people go on vacation, was fantastic. The Nasdaq was up 2.75% which was the best weekly gain since December 2016. This was led by Apple which was up 2.62% this week. It now has an $847 billion market cap. The event which will unveil the new iPhone will be September 12th, meaning your window to sell it if you’re a short-term trader is closing.
Friday was the beginning of September which usually means bad results for stocks, but that is caused by people coming back from vacation and realizing stocks rallied too much on low volume. That realization comes after Labor Day, so this Friday didn’t count. Gold was up 2.6% for the week which was the best week since April 2016. Usually September is great for gold since there’s increased stock volatility and because of the Indian wedding season. The S&P 500 was up 1.5% which was the best week in 4 months.
The table below breaks down the S&P 500’s performance by sector. Only the energy sector is down year to date. Healthcare and information technology hit their all-time closing high which is make sense since they were the two sectors which had the highest rate of firms beating their earnings estimates. Even though stocks sold off after they initially beat earnings estimates this past earning season, it appears the winners are now getting their due. Financials are below their 50-day moving average and only up 7.0% year to date partially because the Fed has been dovish after the second rate hike this year. Their net interest margins won’t be expanding anytime soon. The expectations for rate hikes in the next 12-months have come down dramatically, as zero hikes are being priced in.
The S&P 500 was up 0.20% on Friday despite the bad labor report which I will get to in a moment. The VIX was down 4.34% to 10.13. As you can see from the chart below, the 12-month rolling volatility is near its all-time low. There’s no rule that says volatility must increase after being low for a while, so don’t think this means a correction is coming. There would need to be a negative catalyst for that to happen.
